I’m a little pissed off that it took me two years to get to this book. Sometimes, you’re in the middle of a really good book — laughing or crying or doing whatever it is you do— when written word-magic forces a few great memories back into your frontal lobes, and you say to yourself “damn [whomever the author is], thanks for the early birthday present”. If you’re a middle-aged something or other that was anywhere even near the smell of a good Friday night party in the mid-70’s, then this is one of those books.
Ben Fong-Torres, the not “almost famous” consummate rock ‘n roll insider, is the perfect author for this rough and tumble give it to me right-between-the-eyes history of Little Feat, one of the greatest bands of the ‘70’s. Willin’ is right up there with Fong-Torres’ earlier home-runs on the Doors (The Doors by the Doors [2006]) the Dead (The Grateful Dead Scrapbook, 2009), but with Willin’ he’s the first out-of-the-gate-covering-yet-another-iconic-band-reporter, with his deep research style and exceptional skill putting it all in context. Fong-Torres does justice to Feat from birth-to-death to various reincarnations, featuring Frank Zappa as the mid-wife, cocaine as the reaper and Craig Fuller and Shaun Murphy taking turns at punarbhava.
Were the Feat the greatest, back-in-the-day ? Well…when it came to live albums, Waiting for Columbus was sure as shit near the very, very top of the list. Sure, there were the Stones, the Dead, the Ramones, Marley and the Wailers —damn, there was a lot of quality material to grab any self respecting disco-haters’ attention at any Friday night party in the 70’s. Almost too much to sift through and digest at the time. But read this book and you will find yourself, like me, putting Feat at the top… at least when they held it together for a microsecond or two … or when they weren’t too busy killing themselves.
If you WERE there back in the day, your Feat introduction could’ve well been (unfortunately) a pitcher of cheap vodka and even cheaper triple sec kamikazes in a pal’s dorm-room, or a red cup of flat beer at some renegade neighborhood party that was neck-deep in the magic hour of just-before-the-cops showed-up. Or maybe you were just staring at THAT GIRL or THAT GUY and can’t even remember where the f*&k you were, but, at some point, “Oh Atlanta” started screaming out of a pair of those ridiculously oversized circa 70’s Bose speakers and you nearly pissed your pants. Right? Or maybe “ Willin’ “came over the college radio station while you were sucking face in the back seat of your mom’s station wagon. And it made you stop sucking face like you had suddenly been lobotomized with a rusty pair of scissors. Or, if you’re a newbie, maybe you got turned on to the Feat just yesterday, and not a million years ago like us tired old f*&ks. Regardless, with just that one song you were or are now hooked, addicted, irrevocably wedded to the bipolar-devil-savior Lowell George. And whenever that moment was, weren’t you also thinking to yourself “Oh yeah, sure, I get it, this is in my bones”? The Feat have that effect on people.
This book explains why. It shows us how Feat lovingly ripped off everything from Howlin’ Wolf and Country & Western to Allen Toussaint and The Meters to create their own version of welded-to-your-heart and guts American roots. It shows us how Payne, Barerre and the rest of the lads actually balanced George and kept things going so the thing didn’t shrivel up and rot. There’s a lot to tell if you want to explain that special brand of Feat genius. And along the way you will once again smell those hideous kamikazes, or that flat beer, or THAT GIRL’S hair. But no worries, it’ll also make you feel the music. In your bones.
The first 200 pages or so are devoted to Lowell George’s Feat, with the last 50 dishing on the peaks and valleys of the band after that awful night in Arlington VA. That shitty awful night, across the river from where the Feat had some of their best moments in the batshit crazy Lisner auditorium, the night Lowell George checked out on all the people that loved him before his solo tour ended.
And love him they did, as Fong-Torres deftly recounts in a more informed than anyone really deserves to be fashion. All the rumors are documented — with some really good real quotes. From Linda and Bonnie, to Emmylou and Rickie Lee and a few more before after during and in between. You wind up arguing with yourself that no one lifetime, particularly a short-ass 34 years, deserves even half that much oh-my-god-babelicious so Fong-Torres must be lying. But he ain’t — heck, he might be leaving a few things out — I mean he’s one hell of a researcher but how could he possibly know about ALL of that stuff? George was a lot of things but from everything you read, it doesn’t look like he ran around bragging. But I guess if Fong-Torres left anything out in the book and there’s actually more than that, none of us could believe it anyway. Well, maybe I could’ve used a bit more about Emmylou, but mostly it’s about right.
Along with the sex tidbits, we get multiple tastily-written snapshots of Feat in the studio, George the producer genius, triumphant European tours, the Feat digging in to do some of their best work in semi rural Maryland (oh, so THAT’S how they became huge in DC), and a panorama of truths, half truths, and a few outright lies that make you grin and roll around in this book like you’re buck naked in a feather bed with 500 count Egyptian cotton sheets. We get all the good stuff and the ugly stories too, the decade of fights between George and Billy Payne, the horror Wednesday show when Feat were at their worst but still good enough in spots for the “Columbus” record, the stupid f*&king drug binges that ruined them — you know, all those rock and roll stories that a great band inevitably collects like belly button lint. The real ugly is in this book too, and Fong-Torres weaves from the tasty to the ugly and back again so deftly it’s like binge-watching a couple dozen of the best movies ever made on a rainy weekend in your jammies on the couch with a full pitcher of kamikazes … this time made with good booze, not the cheap stuff.
Even if you’ve heard the stories you haven’t really heard them the right way until you’ve read Willin'. I remember hearing way back-when that George had worked with the Dead at one point, but there’s nothing like hearing the tale straight from the mouths of Weir and Hart. And yeah… I knew George was from L.A., not backatown or down da road like any normal person would guess…but learning how deep the L.A. roots really go for the entire band is a real treat. Fong-Torres digs in and gets an unholy amount of both wistful dirt and love honey from nearly everyone that was a part of Feat life back in the day. It’s the best part of the book. The Feat auxiliary, the Feat session musicians, the bands that Feat were session musicians for, George’s family, and on and on, it’s not a book, it’s a f*&king tapestry that does what these books always try to do but often fail to deliver. The truth. Damn near all of it. Even the pieces that everyone, including George, exaggerated or lied about to the point that no one knows the real truth. Fong-Torres gives you the unpolished and polished versions, the truths half-truths and lies, at least on the important stuff.
And sometimes even the more minor stuff, and it makes you laugh out loud. Yeah, “Little Feat” really did get picked for the name because Lowell George and colleagues had little feet. But did they decide on “Feat” for the humorous play on words or because George was a Beetles (no, Beatles) fan ? Get it ? Really, who gives a southern hoot and holler, it’s better to have both versions anyway, because it probably is both. In fact, Fong-Torres starts the book out unabashedly telling us that a lot of what you can dig up about the early days of the Feat, even straight from the mouths of the participants, is a mish-mash of truth hyperbole and outright lie, so he dishes it all-out for you to decide what you want to believe. It’s great entertainment. Truths and half-truths. The big truths like Lowell George wasn’t a southern howler, he grew up a rich kid from Laurel Canyon. Or, when you get to some of the great photos in the middle of the book, in one or two it really looks like someone just dragged George drunk and dirty out of the ass end of a Denny’s next to some truck stop outside of Tonopah at three in the morning. Or Tehachapi. It doesn’t matter.
You can’t help but get drenched in the stuff and so when I got near page 200 I have to admit I was a bit exhausted. This book forces you to wade through an awful lot, but in a good way. Near the end I really did want to believe that George wasn’t a bit of an asshole that cheated on his wives, unnecessarily pissed off his closest friends, wasted gobs of studio time getting high, and that died young from drug-induced stupidity. Yeah, he was all that, but as you read the book, how truly tortured brilliant the f*&ker was rises above the ugly. George’s Feat was just too delicious to hold any grudges, even if the dumb bastard had to kill himself in the process, and in the end convincing us of that is Fong-Torres’ great accomplishment with the book.
Initially I didn’t want to read the last 50 pages but I’m glad I did. It gives us more triumph and tragedy that only the Feat could create, it’s just that this time it’s all post-Lowell George, and even more unpredictable. Fong-Torres gives us vivid stories on everything from Richie Hayward’s illness, to the Phish Halloween Columbus concert (too cool for school) to the post George front-man / front-woman revolving door (and where some of the bands decisions were a big mistake). We learn about the Payne – Barrere - Robert Hunter (yes, THAT Robert Hunter) collaboration. Barrere’s illness is a little hard to take after George and Hayward, but at the end the band lives on. Yeah, really. With a rocket in their pocket. Shit, if the web site don’t lie the remaining Feat will be playing multiple shows at the 14th Jamaican Feat Camp January 9, 2016. Hoy hoy boy, Feats don’t fail me now.
